Three New Bars Are Reinventing the Jazz Age

And uptown in Harlem, Minton’s, on the first floor of what used to be the Cecil Hotel, is open again, although this time with the help of Alexander Smalls and Richard Parsons. The duo plans to keep the jazz club, which opened in 1938 during another heyday of jazz, planted firmly in the past, with white tablecloths, dinner jackets required,and regular nightly live band performances. (The band includes musicians who used to play at the original Minton’s Playhouse during an era when Charlie Parker, Thelonious Monk, Hot Lips Page, and Billie Holiday graced the stage.) Sitting inside the 70-seat space, where the drinks are stiff and the food is pegged as “Southern-revival cooking with low-country notes” (think biscuits with maple butter, grilled shrimp and charred okra, and Hoppin’ John pilau), it’s not so hard to imagine that this is where Bebop, the basis for modern jazz was born. “It’s an amazing opportunity to be given,” says Smalls, “to be the caretaker of history.”

“I happen to like New York, I happen to like this town. / I like the city air, I like to drink of it, / The more I know New York the more I think of it. / I like the sight and the sound and even the stink of it. / I happen to like New York,” croons Cole Porter in his 1930s musical The New Yorkers. Here, three new restaurants and bars from the throwback era that make us like this city all over again.

Old King Cole’s merry old soul is on view once again at the King Cole Bar and Salon, which officially opened earlier this month. The restored Maxfield Parrish mural will watch over the new space inside the St. Regis Hotel, helmed by John DeLucie—who was also in charge of historical revamps at Crown and Bill’s Food & Drink. “I’m a nostalgic person, and it interests me to think about how the city was 40, 50, 60 years ago,” he says. “Growing up as a kid on Long Island, the city was this mystical, amazing place. I watched a lot of TV and movies, and every time a fabulous thing was going on, it would always be at a place like the St. Regis.” New decor will draw inspiration from the jazz lounges of the 1920s, while the food skews Mediterranean, with a menu that will focus on small plates. Of course, some things are just fine without any update. “We’re going to keep the Red Snapper,” says DeLucie, describing the drink more commonly known as a Bloody Mary made famous in the U.S. at the King Cole Bar. “In the ’30s, they couldn’t call it a Bloody Mary—it was too risqué!”

Seven blocks south, the Lexington New York City is fresh off a $46 million transformation—one that celebrates the Art Deco movement happening when the place originally opened in 1929. Back then, it was a hub for jazz musicians and Hollywood heavy hitters like Arthur Godfrey, Patti LaBelle, and Joe DiMaggio and Marilyn Monroe, who lived together in what is now the Centerfield Suite on the eighteenth floor. Paige Powell commissioned artwork for the space, including steel screens from Alba Clemente and a graphic mural from Ruben Toledo. “I love the architecture of this building, so they basically had to stop me from working,” said Toledo, who painted a piece for two months and called it Deco-Dance. “I wanted to cover every square inch of it.”

And uptown in Harlem, Minton’s, on the first floor of what used to be the Cecil Hotel, is open again, although this time with the help of Alexander Smalls and Richard Parsons. The duo plans to keep the jazz club, which opened in 1938 during another heyday of jazz, planted firmly in the past, with white tablecloths, dinner jackets required,and regular nightly live band performances. (The band includes musicians who used to play at the original Minton’s Playhouse during an era when Charlie Parker, Thelonious Monk, Hot Lips Page, and Billie Holiday graced the stage.) Sitting inside the 70-seat space, where the drinks are stiff and the food is pegged as “Southern-revival cooking with low-country notes” (think biscuits with maple butter, grilled shrimp and charred okra, and Hoppin’ John pilau), it’s not so hard to imagine that this is where Bebop, the basis for modern jazz was born. “It’s an amazing opportunity to be given,” says Smalls, “to be the caretaker of history.”